Purnanand Sarma, PhD
President and Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Purnanand Sarma serves as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Immunome. Sarma brings more than 25 years of experience in all aspects of pharmaceutical industry business across multiple R&D platforms, ranging from venture-backed biotechnology start-ups to large cap pharmaceutical companies. He was most recently the President & CEO of Taris Biomedical, which he built over the last nine years into a leader in therapeutic urology, focused on diseases such as bladder cancer and overactive bladder. In addition to raising more than $100M in equity capital, he also sold one of Taris’ products to Allergan (NYSE:AGN) in a deal worth up to $587M. Prior to Taris, Sarma was the VP and General Manager of World-wide Drug Delivery Technologies for Cephalon Corporation (NYSE:CEPH). Before joining Cephalon, he spent over 10 years in various capacities at Nektar Therapeutics (NASDAQ:NKTR), including VP of Drug Development & Program Management and built the entire green field operation of Nektar Therapeutics (India), serving as its first Managing Director. He started his career at SmithKline Beecham in King of Prussia, PA, after earning his PhD in Pharmaceutics from the University of Minnesota and B. Pharm from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India. Sarma also serves as an independent Board member at Vaxess Technologies Inc.

Dennis Giesing, PhD
Chief Development Officer

Dennis Giesing, PhD, having joined the company from Johnson & Johnson. Previously he served as Chief Scientific Officer at Taris Biomedical for nearly 12 years, heading the development of innovative treatments for bladder diseases including overactive bladder and bladder cancer, leading to its acquisition by Johnson & Johnson in 2019. Prior to Taris, Dr. Giesing was Head of Pharmaceutical Development at Medivector, leading the development of treatments to combat infectious diseases, including pandemic influenza and hemorrhagic viruses. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President of Lead Optimization at Aventis Pharmaceuticals, advancing novel therapies into late-stage clinical development.

Corleen Roche
Chief Financial Officer

Corleen Roche serves as the Chief Financial Officer of Immunome. Corleen is a corporate finance and business strategist with extensive executive experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. Prior to her most recent role as the U.S. CFO for Biogen, Ms. Roche was a CFO at various biopharmaceutical companies including Sandoz, IoGenetics Inc, and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Ms. Roche received a Bachelor of Science in Accountancy from Villanova University.

Sandra G. Stoneman
Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary

Sandra G. Stoneman is the Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel of Immunome. In this role, Sandra serves as Corporate Secretary to the Board of Directors and leads the legal, corporate governance, intellectual property and human resources functions of the company. Sandra structures, negotiates and documents the company’s collaborations, partnerships, licenses and strategic and financing transactions. She is a seasoned legal advisor, with more than 20 years of experience advising high-growth companies in the life sciences, medical technologies and high-tech sectors. Prior to her role at Immunome, Sandra was an attorney at the law firms of Duane Morris LLP and Dechert, and is a 1997 magna cum laude graduate of Temple University School of Law, where she was an articles editor for the Temple Law Review, and a summa cum laude graduate of the State University of New York at Binghamton. Sandra has received numerous accolades for her transactional work in the life sciences field, including being continuously listed in U.S. News/Best Lawyers, Chambers USA, LMG Life Sciences and IFLR1000, and being named an Influencer of the Law by The Philadelphia Inquirer, a Best of the Bar by The Philadelphia Business Journal and a Top USA Woman Dealmaker by Global M&A Network.

Michael J. Morin, PhD
Chief Scientist

Michael J. Morin, Ph.D. has been our Chief Scientist since August 2021. Prior to that, Dr. Morin served as our Chief Scientific Officer since May 2019 and served as our Chief Executive Officer from March 2017 to May 2019. Dr. Morin previously served on our Board from March 2017 to August 2020. Prior to originally joining us as Chief Scientific Officer in January 2017, Dr. Morin served as an independent consultant to the biotechnology industry, including us, from September 2015 to March 2017, and he served as the Chief Scientific Officer of Onkaido Therapeutics LLC from June 2014 to September 2015. He has also served as the Chief Executive Officer of Supportive Therapeutics, LLC, and held various roles, including Vice President in Global Research and Development at Pfizer, Inc., where he led Antibacterials, Immunology and Cancer Drug Discovery. Dr. Morin received his B.Sci. in Biological Sciences from the University of Lowell (now the University of Massachusetts Lowell) and his Ph.D. in Cancer Pharmacology from the State University of New York at Buffalo (Roswell Park Graduate Division). Dr. Morin completed his postdoctoral work as an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the Yale Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Matthew K. Robinson, PhD
Chief Technology Officer

Matthew Robinson, PhD, has been with Immunome since March 2016. Dr. Robinson brings over 20 years of experience in the fields of antibody engineering and therapeutic development. Prior to joining Immunome, Matt was a faculty member in the Developmental Therapeutics Program at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. His academic research laboratory focused on the development of antibody-based molecules for the detection and treatment of cancer. His work was funded through grants from the NIH, American Cancer Society (ACS), and Department of Defense (DoD), as well as by industry partners. Dr. Robinson earned a B.S. degree in biology from Allegheny College as well as a M.S. in biochemistry and Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry. Following his graduate work he performed post-doctoral studies at Yale University School of Medicine. Matt served both on the Scientific Advisory Boards of a number of antibody-based biotechnology companies and multiple NIH, DoD, and ACS grant review panels.

Dennis Dong, PhD
Vice President, Product Development

Dennis Dong, PhD, is a seasoned biotechnology leader with more than 20 years of industry experience and contributions to the advancement of several dozen biotherapies including 5 launched mAb products. Dennis is currently serving as Vice President, Product Development of Immunome and leading the effort in the development (cell line, upstream and downstream, analytical method, formulation, and bioanalysis), manufacturing and testing of our lead monoclonal antibodies. Before joining Immumome, he was Executive Director of Process and Technology Development at WuXi Advanced Therapies, responsible for AAV and Lenti viral vector platform development and launch, and client program support, the establishment Rapid Analytics and CMC groups, and regulatory activities. Prior to that he was Senior Director of a new BioManufacturing company, MTA2 (now 8BioMed), in charge of building GMP manufacturing facility, QC lab, and the team. Dennis’ Biologics and Vaccine R&D career also led him successfully for many years at Novo Nordisk, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Sanofi and Teva, with increasing responsibilities, covering in Biologics discovery, process development, CMC, Biosimilar, Bioanalysis, project management and operation. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship training from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory under Prof. Michael Wigler, and his PhD in Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology under Prof. Gerald Hart at the Johns Hopkins University School of medicine. He received B.S. in Biochemistry from Stony Brook University.

Destardi Moye-Sherman, PhD
Vice President, Program Management

Destardi Moye-Sherman, PhD has over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry spanning discovery, pre-clinical, early-and late-stage development across various therapeutic areas including oncology, rare diseases, diabetes, and anti-infectives.  Prior to joining Immunome, Destardi held leadership positions in program management at Venatorx Pharmaceuticals, Cabaletta Bio, Idera Pharmaceuticals,  Viropharma Inc. (acquired by Shire), and Merck.  She received her PhD in organic chemistry from Texas A&M University.

Fang Shen, PhD
Vice President, Research and Translational Biology

Fang Shen, PhD, has more than 12 years of industry experience in drug discovery and translational research. Before joining Immunome, he was Associate Scientific Director at Janssen R&D, where he led a cross-coast research team to develop novel therapeutics to treat autoimmune diseases and cancer. As a project lead, he has successfully advanced multiple small molecule and biologics projects from early discovery stage to clinical development, including JNJ-61178104, an anti-TNF/IL-17 bispecific Duobody. Prior to Janssen R&D, he had a successful career in the Immunology Department at Genentech, where he contributed to non-clinical pharmacology work on BTK inhibitors and PI3K inhibitors. Fang earned his PhD in Immunological Pharmacology at Peking Union Medical College & Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in China. He then performed post-doctoral work at Dr. Sarah Gaffen’s lab in the University of Buffalo and was one of the key contributors deciphering IL-17 function and IL-17 receptor signal transduction.

Ananth Katta
Vice President, Quality Assurance

Ananth’s quality assurance career of 20+ years has been to conceive, design, execute and monitor the global Pharmaceutical Quality (GMP/GDP) involving GxP, Quality Operations, Quality Compliance, Quality Systems, Quality Audits, Supplier Quality Audits, Regulatory Audits, Validation, Quality Management Systems and Electronic Systems.  Ananth had successfully negotiated with the USFDA, leading to the revision of USFDA regulation. Additionally he handled several regulatory audits globally {USFDA, DEA, NABP, Health Canada, EMA, TGA, MHRA, HPRA, ANVISA, Russia MIT}. Ananth joined Immunome from FerGene (a Gene Therapy company) where he instituted a new quality management system to improve the end-to-end supply chain network. In addition, Ananth secured several state licenses required for product distribution. Prior to FerGene, Ananth worked for 12 years at Shire Pharmaceuticals (now Takeda) where he established a global Quality presence. Ananth instituted quality management systems at Strides Inc (startup company based in New Jersey, USA) and increased company productivity by 250% by implementing a lean and customer focused Quality oversight of the production.

Robert Lapetina
Vice President, Finance & Corporate Controller

With over 20 years of experience, Mr. Lapetina is a strategic business partner who has provided financial support and leadership mainly in the medical device and pharmaceutical industry. Prior to his most recent role as the AVP, North America Expense Management at Chubb Insurance, Mr. Lapetina held roles of increasing responsibilities including controllership responsibilities as well as strategic planning at various pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer, Wyeth and Johnson & Johnson. Mr. Lapetina received a Bachelor’s of Science in Accountancy from Temple University’s Fox School of Business and a MBA from Saint Joseph’s University.

Jillian DiMuzio
Senior Director, High Throughput Screening & Automation

Jillian DiMuzio brings nearly 25 years of assay development and small molecule / biologics screening expertise to her role in leading Immunome’s efforts to screen patient antibody repertoires against a vast antigen landscape. Prior to joining Immunome in 2017, Ms. DiMuzio was recruited by Idera Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, MA, to develop mid-scale in vitro / in vivo screens for antisense oligonucleotides and TLR agonists as therapeutics for oncology and other rare disease indications. Previously, Ms. DiMuzio began her career at Merck and Co. in West Point, PA where some of her most notable scientific achievements culminated with her co-authoring several publications, including one in Nature, on the association of Presenilin I with gamma-secretase. Additionally, Ms. DiMuzio developed an elaborate five-panel enzyme screen which led directly to the discovery and acceptance of multiple pre-clinical candidates with two realizing commercial launch for the treatment of Hepatitis C virus. Ms. DiMuzio holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Chestnut Hill College.

Benjamin Harman, PhD
Senior Director, Target ID and Validation

Ben Harman, PhD, is a cellular immunologist with a deep understanding of immune biology in the context of solid tumors and has 10 years of industry experience focused on the development of antibody-based agents for the treatment of cancer. Prior to joining Immunome, he was a Senior Scientist at Janssen R&D, where he led a team focused on the development of T cell redirectors for cancer therapy and developed immune-based assays to predict their efficacy in vivo. Ben received a B. Sc. (Hons) in Anatomy and Human Biology from University of Liverpool, UK and then went on to earn a PhD in Immunology from University of Birmingham.  After completion of his PhD, Ben performed postdoctoral work at both University of Birmingham and University of Pennsylvania before joining Janssen R&D.

Pavel Nikitin, PhD
Senior Director, Antibody Engineering

Pavel A. Nikitin, PhD, has 7 years of industry experience in the antibody engineering and B-cell biology fields. Previously he was a Sr. Scientist at True North Therapeutics, a small startup in South San Francisco, CA that developed a monoclonal antibody Sutimlimab. After True North Therapeutics was acquired by Bioverativ and subsequently by Sanofi, Pavel led a group and a project team developing the second-generation C1s-inhibitor antibody with the improved PK profile. Prior to that Pavel was a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in Emeryville, CA where he demonstrated the antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) of the anti-CMV antibody cocktail CSJ148 and contributed to the IND submission. He earned a Diploma with Honors (M.S.) in Molecular Biology from Novosibirsk State University and PhD in Molecular Genetics and Microbiology from Duke University School of Medicine.